


The Sandstorm

by unicorn_flavor



Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Caretaking, Death, Depression, Desert, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Happy Ending, Fantasy, Feels, Freeform, Loss, Loss of Parent(s), Magic, Mother-Daughter Relationship, My First AO3 Post, Pain, Sad, Spirits
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:33:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29409840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicorn_flavor/pseuds/unicorn_flavor
Summary: TW:Depression, emotional painHey, guys! This is my first Ao3 post, so I wanted to have it be something quick. If you like it and want more, please comment and tell me! IDK about updates, but there’ll be at least two or three chapters. I don’t know where it’s going to go, so summaries will be hard, but here’s an excerpt:“The Wanderer was a spirit older than time. It did not know from where it came, or from when. It simply was. It lived alone in the endless desert. It had a home, but it preferred to, well, wander. It was it’s namesake, an instinct. One day, it came across a limp shape. A human, with brown skin, short dark hair, covered from head to toe in sand. The wanderer brought it home, knowing it needed care....And so the Wanderer provided it.”
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

She didn’t know where she was going. She just wanted to die.

The sandstorm howled, and sand swirled all around her like the words in her head, “no more, no more, no more.” She had no more. Further she walked into the raging storm. She couldn’t see anything ahead of her. Sand blew into her eyes, but she didn’t care. She had no more. Nothing to stay for.

She fell over in the sand. She was reminded of a time when her mother, oh, her mother, sat stroking her hair in the coolness of their home, a burrow-hole dug deep in the rock of a desert oasis. She didn’t know the storm, and never felt any of the pain she did now. It would have brought a tear to her mother’s eye to see her like this, sinking down into what she had tried so hard to protect her from. Sinking down, like the sand now disappearing beneath her.

She curled up into a ball, not even struggling to crawl out of the quicksand enveloping her. She had no more. The storm kept getting worse. “No more, no more, no more.”

Through the airborne sand, clouding any view of what was ahead of her, a figure appeared. A mask resembling the elongated head of a human, strapped to a stick poking out of a shawl sewn together out of dusty fabrics. Two sticks poking out of the bottom of the cloth, holding up the creature and letting it kneel down. Two more sticks served as arms, long enough to reach out from under the cloak and carry her home.

\--

The Wanderer was a spirit older than time. It did not know from where it came, or from when. It simply was. It lived alone in the endless desert. It had a home, but it preferred to, well, wander. It was it’s namesake, an instinct. One day, it came across a limp shape. A human, with brown skin, short dark hair, covered from head to toe in sand. The wanderer brought it home, knowing it needed care.

The Wanderer’s home was small and unadorned, as it did not use it much. A mound of sand, with a wooden door, a twig for a knob, and insulated with more sticks. It did not know where the sticks came from, they just were there. So it made use of them. It did not remember making its home, but it knew of it ever since it could remember. It brought the human inside, setting it down on a mat made from another material the Wanderer did not know of. 

It knew the human needed care, but of what kind? Another ancient instinct told it to look closer. The Wanderer followed it, like it always did, and saw the human needed a home. To be cared for and loved.

And so the Wanderer provided it.

Later, when the human woke up, spitting out all the sand it had swallowed (from a sandstorm, the Wanderer suspected), the Wanderer was there, waiting. When it noticed, the Wanderer sat up from its project, a clay pot, set down it’s carving tool (a sharp rock strapped to one of it’s sticks), and came over. The human looked up with curious eyes.

“Wh-” it started, before throwing up more sand, and slumping back against the wall it was propped up against. The Wanderer leaned over to scoop it off the human’s chest. It regained it’s posture, sitting upright once again.

“Who are you?” It asked.

The Wanderer knew what it was saying, but it didn’t know how to respond. Another instinct came, and it began to spell out words in the sand. It did not know how it did it, but it just did. That’s how things were for the Wanderer.

The human looked down, and read the words the Wanderer had written out. They told the human it’s rescuer’s name.

_I will help you,_ the Wanderer wrote after it saw the human had understood. _You are injured._

The human made a face, looked down, and nodded.

“I know.”

_But I am here._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter! A reminder, please comment if you like it. I have ideas for a greater world to take place, but I need to know I have an audience. Anyways, enjoy!

* * *

As usual, time kept moving on. Day, another day. But there was more in each 24 hours to the Wanderer. The human, (whose name it had sensed to be Marala), began to recover quickly under the Wanderer’s care. It didn’t know much about what humans really did to survive, but it supplied whatever the human asked for. Soon it had run out of the water it used to water it’s plants, among other things, so it was no surprise when it saw Marala had disappeared from her bed one morning, after it woke up and the Wanderer was working on the clay pot again. It had more time to give to crafting, it kept listening to it’s inner voice, caring for the human, so it had multiple pots already completed. The Wanderer noticed one of the pots was gone, tooken by the human, so it set out to find her.

The Wanderer reached her, where she had been crawling in the sand, and had fallen over out of exhaustion. It picked her up, and she told him where she was meaning to go.

An oasis, many miles away from the Wanderer’s home. It carried her across the desert all the way, where the human suddenly jumped out of its arms, and ran toward the nearest pool of water, pot in hand. She began to scoop water up into the pot, gulping it down, not stopping to wipe away the water spilling all over her. After she had drunk her fill, she ran over to one of the palm trees around the pools, and began to move her body up it. The Wanderer watched curiously as it pulled some palm fruits down from the top, then tossed them down into the Wanderer’s waiting hands. Once the last of the fruits were taken off of the last tree, Marala stayed up there, looking out on the desert. The Wanderer didn’t know how far it could see, it sensed everything around it, and had another inner sense of direction and time. But the human noticed something, as it heard her beckon it, hopping down from the tree, picking up the jug, and starting to walk off into the distance. The Wanderer followed her, wondering what else it was going to gather.

They walked for quite some time, and even longer than before. The human had eaten half of the fruits, and consumed about the same percentage of water already, and the Wanderer realized they would have to go and get more later. But for now, Marala was intent on continuing forward.

Through the desert they walked, the human leading the way for the Wanderer. Soon, it could see where she intended to go. On the horizon, another oasis sat, and a small flag was planted in the ground, marking the something Marala was after. Once they finally reached it, Marala began to scrape dust away frantically from the side of the rock, and the Wanderer sensed her worriedness. It began to help, clearing large swaths of sand away with its long sticks. Marala turned her gaze away from the sand to smile weakly at the Wanderer.

Soon, they came across a hole in the rock, now rid of the sand blocking the way. Marala suddenly began wriggling down it, and curiously, the Wanderer followed.

Inside the hole, there was a small space with some jugs in the corner, candles sitting in niches on the walls. It looked like a home. Marala’s home. But despite all her excitement to get here earlier, she looked crestfallen, overcome with sadness, sitting in the sand. Something was missing.

Marala turned to the Wanderer.

“My baby.”

\--

Marala never believed she would be gone.

She had been through high and low, gotten stuck in the middle of a sandstorm, then was found by a wandering desert spirit. She had little to no recollection of her past, but one thing remained in her scattered brain.

Her child.

Marala had left her, even though she had sworn to protect her against the storm, hunger, and all that was out to break them. She had tried so hard, and here she was, in her home, with her child missing.

The Wanderer knew what was going on now. It kneeled down to comfort her, and Marala felt it speak to her. Like a voice in her head, but not her own. It didn’t feel like it shouldn’t be there.

_We will find your child,_ the Wanderer told her.

Marala knew the Wanderer would try its best. It had rescued her from death. Without her child, she felt closer to that now. But with the Wanderer by her side, comforting her, Marala felt she could still hope again.

They began to look through the burrow-hole. A stream of water trickled down in the back, into the ground below. It formed a running source of water for the inhabitants of the home. Marala discovered some crates, filled with rotten apples, meat, and other spoiled items. She didn’t feel good about that. She remembered always making sure to have enough food, making sure it didn’t go bad.

_How long was I gone?_ She thought to herself.

Marala felt the Wanderer beckoning to her from across the area, disrupting her thoughts. She turned away from the crates, closing the lids. They could be emptied out later.

The Wanderer was standing beside a hole in the wall, leading to another section of the home. A room. A room that Marala remembered. She remembered resting her child down on a mat in the cool room, hushing them to sleep. They would be gone now. Marala had failed.

She slumped down on the hard rock beneath her feet, beginning to cry again. Despite the Wanderer’s comfortings, she felt the pain again. It was all her fault. Again. Marala turned to run away, and the Wanderer let her.

She wanted to escape from it all. She ran out into the desert, running as far as she could, until she fell over in the sands, the wind blowing against her, starting to bury her in sand.

The Wanderer was not far behind, and when it reached her, lying in the sand, it picked her up, and brought her back to her old home. Marala didn’t want to see it again, ever.

Back in the burrow-hole, the Wanderer set her down, back in the doorway of the room she had just fled from. Marala didn’t move, her head in her hands. She didn’t want to look.

But the Wanderer walked right into the room, and returned to sit in front of her, legs crossed. Marala opened her eyes, lifting her head to see.

The Wanderer held a book. It was tattered and old, the leather cover protecting it’s pages. Marala recognized it. It was her diary. She had written of all that had happened to her, all of the feelings she had forgotten. She grabbed it, and opened it up to read it.

The memories flooded back to her, some sad and painful, like the one where she had lost her lover, the one who held her close. Tears came to her eyes, and continued to flow when she read about all the happy things, such as meeting her child for the first time. Eyes as beautiful as the desert night. The same as her lover.

Marala closed the book, and set it down. She leaned into the Wanderer, and it held her as she wept into it’s fabric. When all of her tears were out, the Wanderer nudged her back. It lifted up the book from the ground yet again, and Marala understood it wanted her to finish it. She skimmed through the blank pages she had yet to write in, all the way to the end, where the writing of someone she did not recognize lay on the page. Marala began to read.

_This is my first journal entry. I don’t know when I found this book, but I remember it was hidden in a corner of the wall. I remember not being able to read it then. But now, I have found my mother’s books, and have learned to read and write._

The realization hit Marala. This was her child’s writing. She kept reading, even though she needed time to process.

_I don’t really know my mother. Writing this brings me closer to her, though. All I know is she would do anything to take care of me. I thank whoever I’m supposed to be writing this to for her. (You’re probably some all-giving spirit of kindness or something.) But I need her back. I have learned to live on my own, but it’s hard when you’re so small, alone in the Great Desert. I am armed with knowledge, the books my mother owned were very helpful, but there is so much I do not know. Where did we come from? Why are we the only ones in the desert? Where is my mother? All I ask is for her to come back._

_Please._

Marala closed the book, not even caring she was wetting the cover with her tears again. Her child needed her. Her child was no longer a baby. They had grown up. Without a mother to care for them.

How long was I gone?


End file.
